Goodreads

Advertisements

February 17. Meat and Metaphores.

I want to find my way into the cave underneath us, explore the big hollow caverns that lie below the fundament of our civilization. I want to descend as far as I can, and breath the stale air of the dark grotto that is filled with highly inflammable gasses. The weight of our civilization compresses it and makes it very dangerous down there. Any spark can blow it up, leading to total disaster. Our fundaments stand on fragile grounds. If we become aware of all the absurdities that support our very roots, if we drag them into the light, they’ll spark and everything will collapse like, like…like…All of this is nothing but metaphores, graphical comparisons that never touch the thing they are intended to describe. They can never mean it. They never are what they describe. There are only worlds upon worlds of description. When I write a sentence like the one preceeding this one I always get a little nostalgic. I could have been a scholar sucking on those sentences for the rest of my vitality, it’s a hard candy.I wrote about Nietzsche. The multifarious perspectives are central in his work. Each “Will to Power” is a perspective, a self-assuming element of the world. There is nothing except metaphores, nothing except perspectives, nothing except the Will to Power. I like this candy more than Jack does. They have invented libraries to work together with people absent or dead. Sometimes they have amazing things to teach us, we call it nourriture when we read a good book, we could feast on a decent library. But I don’t feel like roaming a library at this point in time. I know the books are there in their racks, and they will be standing there long after I’m gone. I don’t feel much curiosity for their content. Why not? I could learn something new. But I’ve already done that for a decade. I’m not hungry now, and I lost my appetite. Probably a digestion problem. I should take a vow or something. Never I will visit a library again before I feel such a strong physiological urge to do so, to gently strike an old book’s cover, to caress its stained Bordeaux linen, to turn the grumbled pages, not before the itching need of burying myself in a tall pile of books becomes omnipresent. By the way, you can do the same oath with respect to people. No bonds again, not before several of your inner organs start swelling and craving and shivering and keeping you out of your sleep for countless nights.